


(well, it's alright baby) i just don't want this last cigarette to be over

by majesdane



Category: Skins (UK)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-21
Updated: 2010-06-21
Packaged: 2017-12-06 09:35:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/734200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/majesdane/pseuds/majesdane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Anything has become impossible. She doesn't know how that happened.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	(well, it's alright baby) i just don't want this last cigarette to be over

  
i would trade a thousand tomorrows for just one yesterday.  
\-- james frey, _a million little pieces_

 

 

 

When she lights up, the spliff held between her teeth, two hands fumbling to work her lighter, the sharp, sudden red-gold glow of the light sobers her for the briefest of moments. She stares at it, transfixed, gaze moving to the center of the flame, as light a colour blue as a summer sky, and she wonders just how hot a blue flame must be. Hot enough to burn her, she knows. Hot enough to leave a scar that will stay with her forever, a constant reminder.

And then she manages to light the spliff, inhaling with a slight cough, and everything gets a bit fuzzy again, her mind drifting off into places that she's only vaguely aware of. All she knows is that it's better than being _here_ , in the real and present world. Here, where she's sat on the downstairs sofa, watching the moon reflect off the black, noiseless face of the telly. Like a spotlight. Here, where she slips down onto the floor, neck titled back awkwardly against the cushions.

She contemplates saying sorry again, dragging herself upstairs and whispering an apology in Emily's ear so soft that she doesn't even stir -- but she does hear it, she _does_ , and somehow it'll turn back time and it will be summer all over again, when they sang along, off-key, to the radio while washing up in the kitchen, Emily's hair tied back into a loose ponytail, damp fringe pushed to the side.

She remembers Emily standing at the sink, the curve of her waist in Naomi's arms, how she turned around into a kiss, laughing, her wet hands gripping the back of Naomi's neck. Hello Mrs Campbell, she'd murmured against Emily's ear, and Emily had kissed her again. Deeper this time. Like there was something more significant about this moment than all the other moments that had come before it, stretched out like one of the maps of Mexico that lay on the kitchen table, momentarily forgotten.

But Naomi's used up all her sorrys, it seems. And sorry wouldn't fix things anyway.

A phone call, maybe, Naomi thinks absently, exhaling a stream of bluish smoke, watching as it fades into the night without warning. Emily isn't home now. She could call, if she wanted to. Or text too, maybe. Naomi wonders if things would be different, them speaking on the phone. She wonders if the silences would seem as heavy and loud, completely suffocating. Wonders if maybe, somehow, them being in different places would allow them to speak, for once. They wouldn't need to be themselves.

They could just pretend.

There's the click of the key in the lock on the outside door, the scuffing sound the bottom of the door makes against the carpet as it swings open. Naomi doesn't have to look to see; she closes her eyes, exhales with a sigh, pictures Emily drunk and stumbling, her hair mussed and her makeup smeared. She smells of alcohol and cigarettes and faint hint of a perfume that Naomi doesn't own.

There's probably a tear in her leggings, maybe just along the knee or her thigh, the frayed bits creeping up under her skirt, a hint of where things could have gone. Maybe an indication of where things _have_ gone and there's the familiar sensation of her stomach dropping, as if the world has given out underneath her, and she burns her fingers on her spliff, muttering a curse and stubbing it out in the glass ashtray on the coffee table with half-hearted anger.

The sound of footsteps in the hallway makes her pause, but they continue past the living room, past _her_ without interruption, and she can't tell if she sighs out of relief or frustration. Maybe both, Naomi thinks, and fumbles around for her lighter and cigarettes; she'll smoke the whole night away, if she's able.

It's not a solution, but it's the only thing she can do. For now, anyway.

 

;;

 

She's tried to justify it to herself before and always she comes up short, realizes that there's no justification or excuse for it at all. And still her mind searches for reasons, especially when her heart feels so torn up that the sadness and regret dissolves into anger. As if somehow she's allowed the right to be angry here, like all of those other times when she fucked up, because _scared_ has always been such an easy excuse for her. Scared of _what_ she always thinks, bitterly, and she hates that she doesn't even know the answer to her own question.

Naomi remembers a loneliness so vast that it was almost over-powering. She remembers the spark of excitement at the idea of wanting someone without expecting anything back, and suddenly every truth was tumbling out of her, including the one that hurt the most -- _I had to tell a lie to come here._ There was something so liberating in being able to tell the truth without every word being analysed and picked apart for all sorts of hidden meanings. It was just so _different_ , and --

And it still doesn't help, the excuses. They didn't help before, when they had taken on different forms, so Naomi's not sure why she expects them to help now. She finds herself clinging to them, relentlessly, and there's a part of her that knows she's got to give them up, but she doesn't know how. Her whole life's been made up of excuses -- her dad leaving, her mum for being the way she was, herself for --

There it is again, another excuse. Them, all piled on top of each other. She feels a stab of self-loathing and wonders when she got this pathetic. Wonders when everything turned into such a bloody mess, problems all tangled together that she doesn't know how to pick them apart and set things right again. Wonders if there will ever be a time when this will all seem insignificant, when they're living in a future so far away that it doesn't feel possible that they're there.

 

;;

 

The letter lies there in the drawer, accusingly.

Naomi had seen it once when she was rummaging around in her room while Emily was out, trying to find a pair of socks that she thought had maybe got mixed in with Emily's things. And she'd found the letter, just sitting there in the front corner of the top drawer, a bit faded from the passing months, but still so bold and full of hope. She touches the writing on the front, tracing over the message there, and feels her heart constrict with a kind of sadness that she hasn't felt in quite some time.

She can feel the traitorous sting of tears in her eyes and no matter how hard she tries to force them back down, they slide down her cheeks anyway, burning like fire. She wipes them away quickly, as if to erase the fact that they even existed, and spends the rest of the afternoon out in the garden, smoking through a pack of fags, until the sun's set and the air's turned cold and Emily still isn't back, out lost somewhere in the city.

Naomi slides onto the couch, presses her face into the pillows, inhales the scent of lilacs and soap, tries not to think about lying on her back, Emily straddling her waist, taking Naomi's hands in her own and moving them to cover her breasts. She tries not to remember the way Emily had arched into the touch, lips slightly parted, her eyes fluttering closed. She can still feel Emily's soft skin under her palms. She can taste salt in her mouth, the end result of pressing kisses along Emily's shoulders, light with sweat.

She said she'd do anything.

Anything has become impossible. She doesn't know how that happened.

;;

It wasn't as if she'd expected things to get better, after that disastrous party that had ended up with them both soaking wet and furious. But the way Emily had come into her room, later, Katie hovering in the door behind her, how she'd wrapped her arms around Naomi's waist, burying her face into Naomi's shoulder -- well, Naomi had just thought it was a _start_. The start of something more, of something better. A promise that there would be fewer nights when Emily didn't come home until the early morning, already hungover and snappish.

Someday they would be better. Fixed.

But _better_ never came, with every day that passed and every tomorrow that became the present. They still tiptoed around each other like they were made of glass, so fragile and easily breakable. In bed, Emily would curl up into a tight ball, while Naomi moved towards the the edge of the bed until she was almost slipping off. She didn't know when they'd turned into this, afraid of even touching each other. As if the most innocent of touches (Naomi, waking, with her arm wrapped loosely around Emily's waist, fingers just brushing against the exposed skin of Emily's stomach) would unravel them both.

The way they fuck -- angrily, in the kitchen, Emily on the counter with Naomi between her legs, a hand up her skirt, stroking her roughly through her knickers until she comes with a shudder, biting down hard enough on Naomi's shoulder to draw blood -- feels almost surreal. She can't remember a time when their kisses didn't have a meaning, a purpose. Can't remember when having Emily's arms wrapped around her, desperate, didn't cause her heart to swell with joy; now she only feels sadness, a kind of emptiness that can't be filled.

She should have expected that they couldn't go on like this, silently struggling against each other forever.

She knows Emily doesn't just go out at night, knows there's a girl that she finds herself in the arms of. That much is obvious. She just didn't expect to find out like this, sitting out in the garden getting properly spliffed and nursing a bottle of vodka when she sees them come into the kitchen, tripping over themselves, laughing. She watches them silently, watches as they kiss up against the sink, knocking aside a cup and spoon and Naomi's feels herself floating away, lost forever in a sky full of stars.

The sound of the cup clattering into the sink seems so final, so loud.

The rest of the vodka is finished off in one long gulp, burning down her throat and settling in her stomach, a pool of fire. She closes her eyes to shut out the tears that she tells herself are from the smoke trailing up from the end of her spliff. When she opens them again, Emily and the girl are gone, fucked off to who knows where; Naomi hears the faint sound of the front door being slammed, voices drifting off into the distance.

Fuck's sake, she thinks to herself, angry and sad and empty, dropping the now empty vodka bottle to the ground and kicking it across the grass.

 

;;

 

Upstairs, the bedroom looks larger than usual for some reason, with the moonlight pouring in through the windows. Naomi closes the curtains with a sigh, shucking off her shoes and dropping her trousers and top on the floor beside them, in a crumpled heap. The bed's unmade; she grabs the blankets from the foot of the bed, pulling them up to her chin, shivering a bit as the cool material hits her skin.

Emily's pillow lies beside her, small and forgotten. Naomi reaches for it, pressing her cheek against it. It smells like Emily's mint and vanilla scented shampoo, her lilac perfume. Naomi closes her eyes, hugs the pillow tighter, remembers sunny summer afternoons in the park, running her hands through Emily's hair, gripping the back of her head, pulling her in for a kiss, grinning. Remembers passing a fag back and forth, the slightest traces of Emily's lip gloss on the end of it, tasting of cherries.

Red, Naomi thinks. Everything about Emily is red.

There are the red scratch marks on Naomi's arms, from Emily, three days prior. The bite on Naomi's shoulder, welling up with crimson blood, staining her eggshell white blouse. Emily's hair in the early sunlight, shining red-yellow like a halo around her head. The colour of the polish on her nails, the strawberry ice lolly they shared on Gina's front porch, laughing, Emily reaching forward to wipe a bit away from the corner of Naomi's mouth.

Red, Sophia's blood on the club floor, pooling out around her head, the club lights reflecting off it. Their eyes, sore from crying. Anger, a spark, Emily's lips smeared with someone else's lipstick, digging her nails into Naomi's wrist and begging for more. Harder. Faster. The strength of Emily, pushing into the kiss, the welts left by her fingers on Naomi's thighs from gripping too tight.

Sorry, she whispers into the pillow, and tries not to cry. I'm so sorry.

If only it were that easy.


End file.
